Wallace Baine, Baine Street: The 1800s are still us

In making the case that the 19th century is still deeply entwined in modern American culture, you might think the Super Bowl would be an argument for the opposing side. With its media-saturated excess, commercialized vulgarity and ritualized violence, the Super Bowl seems to be a profoundly contemporary creation.

But sit here beside me for a moment as we scan the front page of the Salem (Mass.) Gazette from Oct. 12, 1849. There are no photos of anyone named Harbaugh; in fact, there are no photos at all. But there is a small item datelined New Orleans heralding the arrival in Panama of a steamship carrying a half-million dollars worth of gold from San Francisco. And what did they call those who traveled from hundreds, often thousands of miles away to scratch out that gold from the hills of far-off California? Duh, they were known as the '49ers.

In that very same edition of the Gazette, on Page 2, there is another intriguing little item announcing the death of writer Edgar Allan Poe, whose remains were buried in his adopted hometown of Baltimore at the same time the '49ers were pouring into the northern Sierra. Poe's most famous contribution to American arts and letters? Anybody, anybody? Yes, that's right: "The Raven."

The San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, the contenders in this year's Super Bowl, each trace their names and iconography -- the gold helmets of the Niners; the black bird logo of the Ravens -- from the 1840s. Of course, if the New England Patriots had won last week, I'd be writing a different column -- "The 1700s are still with us" -- but you play the hand you're dealt.

OK, so the Super Bowl was a happy accident -- the 49ers and Ravens are the only two NFL franchises with nicknames specifically rooted in the 1800s, unless you count the Buffalo Bills, which may or may not have been named after the Wild West showman "Buffalo Bill" Cody; there seems to be some dispute in that matter.

Still, regardless of football, the 1800s are casting an enormous shadow over the modern day. Look at the two favorites to win the Best Picture Oscar later this month. "Les Miserables" is based on the famous musical set in Paris of the 1820s, which is based on Victor Hugo's mammoth novel, which happened to be published in 1862. And, who was the president of the United States that year? Fellow by the name of Lincoln, the main attraction of that other odds-on favorite to win the Oscar. A third Oscar-nominated film, Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," brings modern-day cinematic ultra-violence to the antebellum South. What's more, the top-drawing film of last week was a modernist take on the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," first published in 1812.

On top of that, the leading edge of hipster culture a decade ago has now moved closer to the mainstream. We refer here to the "steampunk" aesthetic, which is centered on a fascination with the styles and technologies of the Victorian era. An offshoot subculture of steampunk has embraced a kind of backwards-facing lifestyle, at least superficially resembling the late 19th century; think artisan food, granny glasses and James A. Garfield beards. Check out the brilliant satirical sketch show "Portlandia," which lampooned its own famous "Dream of the '90s" video by re-fashioning it into a "Dream of the 1890s," gently poking fun at young people wearing handle-bar mustaches and raising their own chickens.

Is this merely nostalgia? And can you even call it nostalgia if no one alive today ever experienced the time period in question?

William Faulkner once famously said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Obviously, Faulkner was totally steampunk. Could it be that, as we are heading into a turbulent middle age -- given the 1800s was America's adolescence and young adulthood as a nation and a culture -- we are looking back at our cultural youth for recurring themes that we're still wrestling with today?

Politically, the fault lines that developed in the 1800s are still very much in evidence today, at least geographically. The North-South split -- or "sectionalism" to dust off an antique word -- was profound and dramatic in the 19th century, so much so that it led to the Civil War. The red-blue dichotomy we've been dealing with for the last couple of decades is an echo of that original sectional conflict and no one who views a modern-day electoral map can not see that same North-South split.

All of which points to the value of diving into the 1800s to find some perspective on what's happening today. The way that the industrialized North and the plantation South used to talk past each other before the Civil War is the same way that coastal liberals and fundamentalist conservatives talk past each other today.

But there are huge differences that explain the longing for that time. The 1850s remains, for me, the most fascinating period of the American past because of the enormous political and cultural tensions building up over slavery that exploded in the Civil War in the 1860s. Look at the political earthquakes of that period -- Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, John Brown, secession -- and any comparison to our modern troubles collapses pretty quickly.

Today might feel like we're on the verge of a devastating political divorce, but step back into the 1850s and you'll see rather starkly that these days, we're just bickering.

Even though the 1800s were our national adolescence, there's a sense that we're more immature today. Compared to the horrors of the mid-19th century, our commitments to political values nowadays are merely the babbling of a baby. How many of us today would be willing to die in the mud of Gettysburg for the sake of climate change or income inequality or the national debt?

And though I'll pulling for the Niners today, in terms of tenacity, toughness and willingness to sacrifice, I'll take those original '49ers over today's football players every time.